Why Secular Buddhism is Not True

In the early Buddhist texts, the liberation teachings are guidelines for bringing the stream of consciousness to an end - extinction without remainder. The Buddha taught: “Nirvana is the stilling of all formations.” Furthermore, as long as the stream continues suffering is an inevitable consequence. The Buddha did not teach that the end of suffering is just being mindful in daily life and appreciating what we have - although this is a good idea! Secular Buddhism does not tell us anything we don’t already know. It also makes assumptions about that which we don’t know! Its only value is to provide an entry point into Dharma inquiry. It is a form of Buddhist outreach to those individuals who have been conditioned by secular ideology. The faithful come in many forms and the Dharma is here to wake us all up - whether we have a secular or religious mind-set. The Buddha challenges us to go further! We are encouraged and assisted to deepen our practice before we jump to conclusions. For some one who has responded to the challenge, ideology - secular or religious - will never do!

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@Coemgenu
You wrote: “rending no one’s experiences as a valid source of truth at all.” This is also what the Buddha taught - as far as I can tell? When the stream of consciousness ends - that is the source of our experience - the truth which liberates is realised. Nibbana is not an ‘experience’ it is a non-event where experience ends. Nobody gets enlightened! It’s not an acquired knowledge of the truth. The passing parade has come and gone having vanished without a trace. When the chittas that come and go are freed from the ten-fetters there will be no returning to any state of being. The Buddha said that an ‘Arahant’ is “freed from the taint of being.” At the time of death the mind of the Arahant is finished - permanently. Nibbana is the true ‘cessation’ of the stream of consciousness. We can have experiential pointers but Nibbana has no location. The Buddha illustrated this through the ‘fire simile’ - where does the flame go when the fire is extinguished - the fire of craving?

Very well said indeed @Mat!

People do sometimes seem to get particularly fiesty about views that promote confidence in the Buddha’s teaching about Kamma and Rebirth. I wonder if, at least in part, this is because on some level they find it deeply threatening to think that there might be others out there who have - to use Bhante’s analogy - been beyond Bundanoon. I mean, it might threaten their very notion of how they’re viewing and approaching the practice. It might make them doubt their ability. They might be so attached to their views and how they influence their thinking and life that to give them up, to consider that there is something more, and something more powerful and out of their control…really out of their control (the really deep anatta stuff) must be, at least sub/un-consciously very frightening.

Such a pivotal paradigm shift will re-define one’s approach. I imagine it would take monumental courage, humility and honesty to admit their fear and go past it…at least to get to a place of more openness and general civility.

What you’ve highlighted here in your post about scientific evidence is clearly coming from your own knowledge base and experience. Mat I think it would be worthwhile your making a new post, (perhaps in the Watercooler, or if you can link in clearly with the EBTs, in another category) with this information. Those of us not exposed to rigorous, professional scientific training need to know this kind of thing.

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This is all true. Nevertheless, I think people who are incapable of defending their views with anything approaching compelling evidence should refrain from criticizing others who have different views, and should be wary of diagnosing what’s “wrong” with those other people or attributing “shallowness” to them.

Traditional Buddhists who get very defensive about criticisms of their belief in rebirth, coming from either non-Buddhists or non-traditional Buddhists, can be frustrated by being confronted with beliefs different than the ones held unquestioningly inside their own supportive faith community, and usually aren’t able to defend their beliefs very well, beyond saying something like “Well, the Buddha said so.” One option they have, then, is to simply leave it at that. This is a common approach among people of faith.

The problem arises, however, when they also insist on viewing all of their belief system - and not just a few core psychological and experiential components - as uniquely scientific in comparison to other religions. Then they can start imagining that they are in possession of a higher “science” that inferior worldly scientists cannot understand, a science that justifies literal belief in Mount Meru, cosmically wandering reborn beings, hungry ghosts, devas, yakkhas, etc.

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You don’t believe in devas, or ghosts either? So be it!

In fact, I am inclined to believe that the Buddha possessed knowledge that “inferior worldly scientists” cannot understand, at least not solely due to their scientific training. Although, you seem to be attributing a great deal of arrogance to that belief - but I don’t really feel that way. Just think for a minute: If the Buddha’s teachings actually lead to the stated goal, the complete cessation of all suffering - the realization of Nibbana - then they would have to be pretty dang extraordinary, and you’d have to admit that no physical science or worldly philosophy can compare!

If it turns out I was totally wrong, and after death “I” become nothing (aka subjective experience ceases forever, automatically - which, it should go without saying, I don’t believe) it won’t have mattered that I spent much of my life believing in rebirth, kamma, Nibbana, etc…However, if it turns out the Buddha was speaking the truth from direct experience (my belief), I’ll be grateful for every moment that I spent trying to cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path (including Right View - which entails belief or knowledge of rebirth).

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Ajahn Sujato. You mention David Kalupahana. Do you have any suggested readings of his to start with. He has a huge number of publications and I don’t know where to start.

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I apologize if someone else has made this point already (166 comments and counting and I can’t read them all). Many of the posters here against rebirth state that it is untestable, but that is not true. I can think of two ways to test it. I’m sure others can think of more. One has already been done, the work of Ian Stevenson and the memories of children. Another way is take meditators who state they are able to remember their previous rebirth (assuming it was human) and track what they find back to a real person (when possible). This second method has problems, of course, adults have more resources to lie (e.g., look up the details of someone’s live and then “remember it”) which I guess is one of the reasons Stevenson started with children. The only reason this hasn’t been done, and no attempt has been made to reproduce Stevenson’s work, is the Scientific Dogma that rebirth is not possible. And it is dogma, science has no mechanism for rebirth, nor any mechanisms that show rebirth to be impossible. Rebirth is a testable hypothesis, lets test it.

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Your comment is also relevant if you reverse your veiled criticism. Secularists can also be tenacious in their clinging to views. We can forget the false dichotomy between cool and critical secular thinkers and poor foolish believers in ghosts and demons. Even scientists can be strident in their views and may defend their pet theories when there is a strong body of evidence that undermines their core convictions. This is what makes a ‘paradigm shift’ a difficult thing to realise.

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Excellent question! I have only read a few of his books, so am by no means an expert.

One thing to bear in mind is that he changed his mind during the course of his career, and his later work is from quite a different perspective. Don’t ask me for details; I forget what the change was about, and anyway, when I heard that—he mentions it himself—I never bothered with his early work.

But I believe the most important work of his mature phase is this one:

Here, rather than treating Buddhist philosophies in terms of schools, he looks at it in terms of a series of chosen works from various sources, analyzing them in the light of the early texts. He aims to show—and I believe largely succeeds—that regardless of the doctrines of the schools per se, there were outstanding individuals whose teachings got to the heart of what the Buddha was about. This is a really innovative approach, and one that, for me, rings true. Great philosophers aren’t just templates stamped out by their school of allegiance.

It’s a serious work of philosophical history, but if you’re reasonably well versed in the early texts, it isn’t hugely difficult.

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secular buddhism is a shallow view of reality. there is no room for expanding vision. but they are going in a good direction. that is what is important.

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Thanks so much, this is very important! Not just secular Buddhists, but all of us are on a path, and we all struggle with limited and inadequate understanding. The important thing is that we keep walking and keep questioning.

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yes. we have lust, hate, delusion but also intentionally developing virtue, concentration, wisdom. we are walking in a good direction and have more in common than not.

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It seems to me that the core of what the Buddha really knew, and taught, that enables people to achieve release can be put pretty simply.

  1. Don’t lie, kill and steal.
  2. Don’t be angry and hate-filled; don’t hurt people with your words or other bodily actions.
  3. Cultivate good-will and kindness.
  4. Don’t become intoxicated with sensory pleasures and worldly pursuits.
  5. Pay attention, be still, cultivate samadhi.
  6. Understand that nothing you experience is your self.
  7. Attend to the arising and cessation of directly experienced phenomena.
  8. Cultivate understanding of how different phenomena are connected.
  9. Attend to the arising of unhappiness, and see where it comes from.
  10. Let go of attachments to present phenomena, and cravings for future ones.

The rest is all inessential. It doesn’t matter whether the world is going to last another 15 billion years, or just 1 more year. It doesn’t matter whether it originated 15 billion years ago, or just a year ago. It doesn’t matter whether the universe is swarming with visible and invisible sentient beings, or whether you are all alone. You should cultivate kindness and fearlessness toward whatever beings are out there, even if you can’t know for certain what they are. Even your own powerful sense of personal identity and continuity is illusory, so the foundation of your cravings for future states of being ultimately rests on sand.

The Buddha knew these things, and knew they were the path to liberation, because he bravely struggled toward liberation and felt his way to, and along, that path without many teachers to help him. He was also a human being, with a culturally conditioned human brain and normal intellectual limits when it it comes to the myriad universe of facts, entities and regular natural patterns. There is no reason to think the Buddha was some kind of cosmic universal seer of all the nooks and crannies of the universe, or of the past and the future. He was a spiritual master, not a megalomaniacal All-Knower with a cosmic crystal ball.

The stories about Brahmas teach us the vanity of such megalomaniacal fantasies. The stories about devas teach us the vanity of aristocratic beautification and sensualism. The stories about yakhas teach us the vanity of rough, malicious talk and action.

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Yes, precisely. That’s all I meant about the “put up or shut up” part. Right now, the evidence, such as it is, is spotty and anecdotal not very compelling on the whole.

Of course, if serious attempts to accumulate the evidence, and formulate and evaluate testable hypotheses don’t turn out well for traditional Buddhist world-views, I imagine many traditional Buddhists will still cling to their world-views.

“If he wants, he wields manifold supranormal powers. Having been one he becomes many; having been many he becomes one. He appears. He vanishes. He goes unimpeded through walls, ramparts, and mountains as if through space. He dives in and out of the earth as if it were water. He walks on water without sinking as if it were dry land. Sitting crosslegged he flies through the air like a winged bird. With his hand he touches and strokes even the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful. He exercises influence with his body even as far as the Brahma worlds. He can witness this for himself whenever there is an opening.

https://suttacentral.net/en/an3.101

Sounds like magic flying to me, no disrespect.

It’s definitely not any proof, whatsoever - and of course I’m sure many people will laugh and ridicule the mere thought lol…but it occurred to me during one period of meditation, the body felt so incredibly light (kind of dissolving into awareness) that subjectively, I did feel that somehow, someway, it may be possible for this body to sort of sail off, to move about freely through the sky (or pass through a wall etc…). Now, mind you, this was a pre-jhanic meditative experience. I can only imagine what could be possible for some people who have really developed their meditation. I don’t reject these things out of hand, either.

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I would guess that your body was not getting any lighter, but that your subjective sensation of your body was undergoing transformation.

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Which is exactly what I said

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Yes and no, I think: two responses to your one question. And of course, as I’m sure everyone is already aware, these are only my own opinions and perspectives, my secondhand trivia, my odd-and-ends, etc.

‘Yes’ because the Buddha does not teach people to follow him or anyone like lemmings on account of they had such-and-such ‘experience’ we can never know (and obviously that is interpretation, good or bad), but ‘no’ because he also doesn’t doubt the veracity of his ‘own’ awakening experience, that is to say, I don’t think there is any indication of him wavering in any way as to if he was sure that he knew we was enlightened. He experienced it. He ‘did the work’. He put it together, bit by bit, with the application of what should be considered empiricism (which is the allegation of the OP as I understand it), and he himself experienced the fruits of that. That’s how I see things at least, the OP in relation to what is being critiqued. We will see if I have said something horrible inadvertently!

What we are dealing with in the quote that you quoted is a perspective that thinks it is simply impossible to ‘objectively’ observe the mind (particularly if ‘you’ are observing it), regardless of ‘mental training’ of any sort: be it efficacious or not so, whether one is the Buddha or not. This perspective simply discounts the empiricism of the Buddha from the OP as expressly not being empiricism at all…

… at least thats how I understand the matter, and the secular perspective being critiqued. It wouldn’t be the first time I was ever wrong if I am simply way off track!

Right from the OP, the description for how one goes about ‘establishing’ rebirth on empirical grounds seems to lay it out like something that someone can observe in the manner that one observes any more obvious causality: like the wind knocking down a tree. And the honing of the skills to observe as such are listed as predicated on ‘mental training’, which DKevrick already pointed out.

But looking at a tree doesn’t necessarily require ‘honing’.

If you listen to music, briefly check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMRp4Pr-w_Q

That might sound like a lot of wild noise to some, but I can assure you that it is not chaos, it is just operating as a higher level of musical-syntactic complexity than, say, this tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkRdvGmcCBE

If you want to be able to ‘hear’ what’s going on in Trout Mask Replica (or identify harmonic progression in a Mozart symphony), get ready to practice some ear-training. I think that is a better example of “honing a sense” than just seeing a tree fall, my earlier example.

For above-listed reasons, ‘secularists’ (those to whom the complaints of this thread apply, not others) reject or are extremely doubtful of the ability to train the senses to ‘comprehend greater levels of syntactic complexity in music,’ (to use the Trout Mask example) with something that is not even considered a sense, necessarily, to them, namely with the mind.

In order to prove rebirth to such a perspective, they need to see a particle move from here to there, or a waveform or something of the like pass from a dead person into a pregnant woman. And they don’t want to see it ‘with their mind’ (from their perspective, IMO), nor do they want to trust what they view as only anecdotal sayings about the alleged substantiation of it, not trusting it to be (I would say, ‘necessarily presuming it not to be’) grounded in a reliable form of empiricism. They want an MRI to confirm ‘mental training’, or some other kind of machine designed to ‘augment the senses’ so that they can ‘see’ the effects of someone else’s ‘mental training’ without actually doing it themselves necessarily (remember: the tacit assumption that mental training is futile because ‘the mind can’t be objectively observed’) as that would not be considered ‘empirical’ to a sufficient degree. But then again, perhaps I am naught but a bag of wind! :sweat_smile:

Not considering ‘consciousness’ a sense, traditionally, I am wondering if that plays into the notion of honing the mind being considered futile.

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I don’t think that’s the only point, although it is true that the ability to test purely phenomenological hypotheses scientifically will probably always be frustratingly limited. Another problem is that no matter how refined and precise and exact one gets in the observation of one’s present experience, it is hard to see how one could draw conclusions about the future from such knowledge. Either one must say the Buddha could literally see the whole past and future - which has nothing to do with the precision of present moment awareness, or else one must argue that the contents of present experience contain sufficient information that one can deduce from them all of past and future history.

Anyway, while these are fun hypotheses to wonder about and kick around philosophically, actually believing any of them given our current state of knowledge seems like wild speculation. And tying one’s spiritual progress up in the quest to get answers to such questions seems utterly quixotic.